The vendor's drawn-out cry—"fu ling gao"—once rang through the lanes of Xinhua, rising and falling like a familiar song. A steamed cake of fu ling (poria mushroom) and rice flour, fu ling gao was a humble everyday sweet beloved across Taiwan. For locals, that cry was never just a sound; it was a memory of sweetness woven into daily life. Xinhua's old street sits along what was once a bustling trade route between mountain and sea, made prosperous by the devotion of its "Eight Bao, Seven Temples"—eight neighborhoods, seven shrines, among them Chaotian Temple, Taizi Temple, Qingshui Temple, Guanyin Pavilion, Hu'an Temple, Wu'an Temple, and Shangdi Temple, each consecrated to its own deity. The steady rhythm of festivals and offerings created a reliable demand for ritual pastries, giving rise to a thriving cake-and-pastry trade that became the backbone of the neighborhood's distinctive street food culture.

From Tsuí-Piánn to Tsuí-Kó-Piánn: A Flavor's Transformation

Among Xinhua's many traditional pastries, the tsuí-kó-piánn—filled with sweet potato—stands apart. Sweet potato is one of Xinhua's Five Treasures (alongside pineapple, bamboo shoots, sesame, and canarium album), prized for its dense, silky texture and gentle sweetness. Steamed, mashed, and folded into a thin pastry shell before baking, it emerges with a flaky, fragrant crust and a soft, yielding center. Elder Wang Rong-sen recalls that these pastries were once made primarily as thanksgiving offerings to the gods, or distributed to family and neighbors to celebrate the birth of a son. Now that the birth of a daughter is celebrated just as warmly as a son's, the tsuí-kó-piánn is shared either way. The name itself carries a hint of this warmth: tsui carries the Taiwanese homophone suí (媠), meaning beautiful—and the tradition of sweetness passed between neighbors endures.

Xinhua's old street is still home to Tai Hsiang, one of its surviving heritage pastry shops—and a living witness to this flavor's evolution. The owner recalls that the pastry was originally called tsuí-piánn until her father began adding citrus juice to deepen the flavor, prompting the name change to tsuí-kó-piánn. Step inside, and the wooden display cabinets and rows of carefully arranged pastries still keep the unhurried rhythm of the old street, as if time had quietly agreed to slow down.

In recent years, a growing number of academic, government, and community groups have put down roots along Xinhua's old street. At the center of this effort is Wang Rong-sen, a lifelong Xinhua resident whose deep knowledge of the neighborhood's ritual traditions and everyday history helped inspire the Mogather (山海屯) Social Enterprise to launch its Museum of Life Stories initiative. Alongside him are Hsu Ming-yang, a community development specialist, and Su Wan-ting, who returned to her hometown to take part. Working with local property owners, Su and Hsu have transformed individual storefronts—pastry shops, bamboo-ware stores, and everyday merchants—into exhibition spaces that tell the stories of the people who built this street. Walking its length, visitors encounter not just goods but lives: a neighborhood's food, crafts, and daily rhythms laid out like chapters in an open-air archive.

☛ 　Xinhua Museum of Life Stories has been selected as one of the Ministry of Culture's inaugural 100 Culture Bases.